How does it not look great on mobile? It simplifies the number of options and simplifies the navigation accounting for the fact that mobile devices would require lots of scrolling on a tiny screen to see as much as you could on the desktop. On the desktop it uses all the screen space to show you more detailed sections you can click right to if you know what you already want.
My apologies. I forgot to whitelist the site for JS, and when I viewed it, almost the entirety of the page was taken up by the categories sidebar[0].
With JS it looks much, much better, and navigation is definitely usable. Though at this point it's raises the question of what is navigation: are all those item categories navigational aids, on par with other nav items? Or are they a product index and separate from navigation items? In regards to the GP's suggestion of "showing all links at once", I think it's fair to say that links that only go on some pages but not others don't count towards the "overpopulated navbar", which is usually intended to hold navigation aids that are available on all pages.
So while I think the site in question does a good job of navigation, I think it does so not by choosing a flat design with all links available in the nav, but by cleanly keeping the navigation to just a few key elements ("Contact Us", "Order", "Activity", "Log in") and deferring all other links to separate UI elements that exist only on the relevant pages.
Also a delight that I click on uBlock origin and there is only one domain being contacted :) very rare nowadays from the web that a site doesn't want to pull and include shit from 30 different websites.
As someone whose job entails buying a lot and very frequently from McMaster-Carr, their website is a godsend.
I need a tube fitting in stainless steel? Here’s a MASSIVE list of all of them for every single size imagine that’s easily Ctrl+F’d. Click on the item, enter a qty, add to cart, keep going.
When you have about 200 line items to fill each morning across multiple POs, racing the clock to secure that same-day delivery, modern UI design paradigms are a massive waste of time.
McMaster-Carr is designed with purchasing teams in mind, and the people who work in such teams are (by training or experience) oriented towards certain optimizations that to the casual user may seem overwhelming to parse or ugly.
The day McMaster goes “modern UX” is the day I lose hope.
Edit: forgot to add that in many cases, purchasing on McMaster is done via CSV imports on their order page. Literally do not have to interact with the catalog if I want to. Which is also a godsend.
That is hideously bad design on mobile. Not only do you have to zoom in and move around while zoomed in to find items it also breaks down so the right part moves more than the left. Yes it is good on desktop but on mobile I'd click on to a competitor ASAP.
This is how I want websites to look :)